UCLA Shooting Is a Reminder Gun-Free Zones Are Not Gun-Free

Wednesday’s murder/suicide on the UCLA campus again exemplifies the fact that gun-free zones are not gun-free for the criminally inclined.

William Klug, the 39-nine-year-old mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, was shot and killed by a student, now identified as Mainak Sarkar, on the UCLA campus just before 10 a.m. Wednesday. The gunman then turned the gun on himself and ended his own life.

University campuses are gun-free in California by state law; Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed a repeal of campus carry in October 2015. That ban removed a state exemption that allowed concealed carry permit holders to carry a gun on campus for self-defense.

With his signature, Brown guaranteed that the only people who carry on campus are criminals who like to prey on unarmed victims.

A similar gun-free zone on Oregon’s Umpqua Community College campus proved impotent to prevent Chris Harper Mercer from shooting nine people to death on October 1, 2015, and the gun-free zone at Virginia Tech University posed no hindrance to Seung-Hui Cho, who shot and killed 32 people on April 16, 2007.